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Wednesday, 13 April 2016

Dream 605

'House of Leaves'

Dream date: 8 April 2016This is Day 40 of my Dream Incubation Experiment. You can read the details and methodology of my latest Dream Incubation Experiment by clicking HERE. Scene 1: UnknownAll I could see were a series of photographs - in colour. I am not sure what they were of (I know they involved people), because they had huge black lines superimposed over them, striking through them, like this. I then knew the meaning to Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves (2000), which was that it was a book based on relationships and love. Suddenly the entire novel meant sense to me and I was sure my interpretation was correct (see Dream Information section, below). TIME: 01:30 - 11:30 hours (I don't know when this dream took place)

LUCIDITY: NO

SPECIAL NOTES: NONE OF NOTEDream Information:

I had previously interpreted the novel as a satire on academia. This is because I am an academic (so I understand the use of the referencing system in creating a form of authenticity or validation) and I also make my own visual art which is based around the idea of the false narrator, fragmentation, authenticity of authorship and authorial voice, and genuineness. My art is conceptual and is text-based, using a fake referencing system, like House of Leaves, in the form of a false narrative. The false narrative is presented as an academic monograph of Tallulah La Ghash as an 'art star', a genius contemporary conceptual artist. The text is a critical analysis of Tallulah La Ghash's 'supposed' art masterpieces (which do not exist in reality), with interviews, opinions and false media or academic quotes. The art is multi-layered. Tallulah La Ghash is an artist because she says she is - the creation of the false narrative in visual form both textually - and materially - achieve the outcome of authenticating that claim, albeit based on wholly dishonest 'evidence'. The text is blurred, distorted and annotated to reflect the meaning of the work. I have given away various of these pieces to friends I believe will enjoy that individual piece. This means the entire 'document' can never be complete - no-one is likely to ever read the entire series, adding to the fragmentation effect. Other themes include the postmodern 'cult of celebrity' etc. I have included some of my art work below.

Back to House of Leaves - I started reading this novel a while ago, and then abandoned it quite early on, because it is dense and complex. I am not afraid of complex literature - I have read James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and a lot of avant-garde or postmodernist literature because my first degree was in English Literature & History of Art. I just couldn't devote enough attention-span to it (because it feels like reading a textbook, and I have to read plenty of those in my studies and day-job!) and I kept having to re-read chapters to remind myself of what was happening, in both the plot and the text itself. While re-reading this book on the night of this dream, I had been watching Youtube reviews of it, to see what other people thought of it and how they interpreted it. I didn't really find that any of the reviewers I watched really analysed the novel in that way, choosing to focus on the textual codes and symbolism or suchlike.

However, when writing up this dream just now, I had to visit the Wikipedia page to link it here. When I was given the book and initially tried to read it, there had been no Wikipedia article, and therefore until the day of this dream, when I decided to pick the book up again, but also see what other reader's interpretations were, I had never 'researched' it online. On the Wikipedia page, I saw a quote from an interview with Danielewski, where he says: 'I had one woman come up to me in a bookstore and say, 'You know, everyone told me it was a horror book, but when I finished it, I realized that it was a love story.' And she's absolutely right. In some ways, genre is a marketing tool.' So - it seems my subconscious intuition about the book's meaning may have been completely correct!

Dreamsigns:

The whole dream - which was only a fragment of a dream really - was a dreamsign

Recurrent Dream Themes:

None of note

Potential Day/Dream Residue:

I had been reading House of Leaves before this dream and I had been researching the meaning of the novel online just before I went to sleep.

Waking Thoughts & Emotions:

This dream was not related to my Dream Incubation Experiment.* I have definitely forgotten some aspects of this dream. If I recall anything else later, I will record it below.